Motorola Edge 50 Pro review

Trade in Motorola Edge 50 Pro

(Image credit: Future)

Motorola might not be as prominent in the flagship smartphone market as it once was, but it still aims to demonstrate its value to consumers. Enter the Motorola Edge 50 Pro, one of three new Edge 50 models, designed to be an affordable powerhouse with advanced AI features.

While the U.S. gets its own Moto Edge 2024 model, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is part of a three-pronged European/global release. It sits between the Motorola Edge 50 Ultra and the Edge 50 Fusion, with all three phones boasting the latest AI capabilities.

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro’s long battery life and midrange price make it attractive to those seeking a budget-friendly yet dependable smartphone. The additional features provided by MotoAI enhance its appeal. However, the device is somewhat hindered by the screen’s width and curve, and a general quality issue with the camera discovered during our testing.

Let’s delve into the features in more detail to see what you can expect from the Motorola Edge 50 Pro based on our review.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: SPECIFICATIONS

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: PRICE AND AVAILABILITY

Currently, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is available in select regions across Europe and Latin America, with plans to expand to Asia, Oceania, and North America in the future. In the U.K., the phone is priced at £599 and comes with a free pair of Moto Buds Plus wireless earbuds.

I found the price to be a bit high considering what’s offered, though the earbuds do add some value. However, the Pixel 8a offers more features and power for £100 less, and for just £50 more, the OnePlus 12R provides superior performance compared to Motorola’s handset. Additionally, U.K. customers are limited to a single storage option, with the Motorola Edge 50 Pro offering 512GB onboard.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: DESIGN

(Image credit: Future)

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro evokes a nostalgic feel with its design, reminiscent of older Android phones. The device features a curved screen and a narrower profile compared to most modern phones. When viewed head-on, the display dominates the front view.

Aesthetically, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is a pleasure to look at, hold, or carry in your pocket. However, the curved screen does present some challenges.

The rounded sides make the Edge 50 Pro comfortable to hold, but they also make it feel a bit too narrow. I found that my fingers could overlap when holding the phone, which is less common with phones that don’t have a curved design. This often required me to hold the phone slightly away from my palm to avoid covering the screen.

The back of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro is covered in vegan leather, which is pleasantly soft to the touch. This same leather also covers the camera block, giving the phone a cohesive and seamless appearance.

The device is available in three color options — Black Beauty, Luxe Lavender, and Moonlight Pearl. The vegan leather enhances the look of each color, as seen in the photos of our lavender test unit.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: DISPLAY

(Image credit: Future)

The 6.7-inch display on the Motorola Edge 50 Pro might not seem particularly impressive at first glance, but the pOLED panel delivers some stunning visuals. The phone boasts over 1 billion shades of color, validated by Pantone, and a peak brightness exceeding 2,000 nits. This matches the listed peak brightness for both the iPhone 15 and Pixel 8, placing the Edge 50 Pro in esteemed company. In my observation, the Motorola display appeared slightly brighter than my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, although this might be due to the screen’s edge darkening.

The claim of over 1 billion colors is believable, as images and videos truly pop on the screen. However, I noticed that whites had a slight grey tint around the edges compared to the same images on a Galaxy Z Fold 5. Additionally, the Edge 50 Pro exhibited a slight delay when switching between apps, causing lingering images to appear briefly.

The Pantone-approved color accuracy made on-screen content stand out, though at lower brightness levels, the hues began to look more washed out.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: CAMERAS

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The Motorola Edge 50 Pro packs a significant amount of camera hardware for a relatively budget-friendly smartphone. The main rear camera boasts a 50MP resolution, delivering excellent image quality with sharp lines and vibrant colors.

The 13MP ultra-wide lens and the 10MP 3x optical zoom lens provide versatility for capturing images and videos from various angles and distances. However, the pinch-to-zoom feature was somewhat cumbersome, allowing only up to a 2.9x zoom before requiring a manual switch to the 3x zoom option. This likely informs the phone to switch from a zoomed-in main camera view to the telephoto, but it felt awkward to use.

For comparison, I tested the Motorola Edge 50 Pro against the Pixel 8 Pro, which uses the same 50MP main camera as the Pixel 8, a direct competitor.

In a photo of statues depicting an animal dinner party, both cameras delivered similar overall definition. The Pixel 8 Pro produced a slightly darker image with deeper, warmer colors, lending more definition compared to the Edge 50 Pro’s brighter but less defined shot.

Using the Edge 50 Pro’s telephoto lens, I captured an image of a Paddington Bear statue and compared it to the 3x lens on the Galaxy S24. Both images were clear, but the Motorola’s shot appeared slightly washed out and greyer, while the Galaxy S24 offered a warmer color profile.

The ultrawide camera on the Motorola Edge 50 Pro had similar issues as the main lens. When I photographed Paddington Station, the colors appeared slightly washed out compared to a shot taken with the OnePlus 12R. The paving stones looked greyer, with the OnePlus camera adding more depth of color. Additionally, the Motorola’s image showed more distortion, with floor lines appearing more diagonal than in the OnePlus 12R photo.

The final test involved the front selfie camera, where I compared the Motorola Edge 50 Pro against the OnePlus 12R. Surprisingly, the Motorola’s front camera produced a darker image, whereas the OnePlus 12R gave me a lighter skin tone and made my droopy eye less noticeable.

In video capture, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro struggled with focus while shooting in 4K resolution, resulting in occasional shifts in focus and unsteady videos. Despite having Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), the feature did not significantly help. The front camera had similar focus issues, making any movement appear blurred. This effect was less pronounced than with the rear camera, possibly due to different backgrounds during testing.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: PERFORMANCE

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The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is equipped with the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, the latest addition to the mid-range Snapdragon 7 series. While it doesn’t match the power of the flagship Snapdragon 8 series, this chipset should handle games and movies reasonably well. However, the Edge 50 Pro does stutter under more demanding tasks.

In our Geekbench 6 CPU test, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro achieved an average single-core score of 1135 and a multicore score of 3166. Compared to rival phones like the Pixel 8a and OnePlus 12R, these scores are not particularly impressive.

However, Geekbench scores don’t tell the whole story, and the Motorola Edge 50 Pro handles most tasks comfortably. Watching YouTube videos at 1080p 60 FPS was smooth with no stuttering, and gaming performance was solid without noticeable quality drops. The phone did slow down during heavy-duty tasks like video editing, but this was not a major issue in everyday use.

To further assess performance, we ran the phone through 3DMark’s Wild Life Extreme Unlimited GPU test, which evaluates how smoothly it handles graphically intense scenes. The results for the Motorola Edge 50 Pro were disappointing, as it struggled to compete with phones like the OnePlus 12R and the Pixel 8a. However, it did outperform the recent Galaxy A55, although that phone costs over £100 less.

This lack of processing power was also evident when trying to transcode a video at 1080p using Premier Rush. For reference, the OnePlus 12R completed the task in 59 seconds, while the Motorola Edge 50 Pro took nearly 2 minutes for the same task. This also means the Edge 50 Pro is slower than the Galaxy A54 5G, indicating that even cheaper phones can outperform Motorola’s latest offering.

On the positive side, the Edge 50 Pro comes with 512GB of storage by default (at least in the U.K.), which is quite generous for this type of phone and should be more than sufficient, especially with additional cloud storage options. However, U.K. customers only have one model to choose from, lacking the RAM options available elsewhere.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: BATTERY AND CHARGING

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The 4,500 mAh battery in the Motorola Edge 50 Pro may not be the largest, but it boasts impressive longevity. During informal testing, the phone dropped only 15% while playing YouTube videos at 1080p for 3 hours. In comparison, the Galaxy A55, with its 5,000 mAh battery, dropped by 22%, and the Pixel 7a by 18%. Given Motorola’s strong reputation for battery life — five Motorola phones rank among our top 15 for best phone battery life — it’s reasonable to expect the Edge 50 Pro to last a long time on a charge.

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro supports 125W charging with the included charger, 50W wireless charging, and 10W reverse wireless charging.

The charging speed with the supplied 125W charger is remarkable. A fully drained Motorola Edge 50 Pro reached 75% power in just 16 minutes and 100% in 25 minutes. However, this rapid charging made the phone very hot, so it’s not recommended for regular use.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: SOFTWARE AND SPECIAL FEATURES

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro runs Android 14 with Motorola’s new Hello UI skin. Android 14 is already a robust operating system, and Hello UI adds a touch of color without cluttering the basic OS with unnecessary features.

Motorola promises three OS updates and four years of quarterly security patches. This is disappointing for a midrange smartphone. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy A55 comes with four years of OS updates and five years of security updates, while the Pixel 8a offers seven years of OS and security updates.

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro includes several AI capabilities, most of which operate behind the scenes. One unique feature is the pattern-generated AI wallpaper called “Style Sync,” which takes a photo of a pattern, such as your outfit, and generates several wallpaper options based on it, allowing you to match your phone. However, I found the feature to be unreliable during testing. When it did work, it produced some attractive patterns.

(Image credit: Future)

Moto’s unique bundle of gesture controls returns from previous models, allowing you to control certain functions of the Edge 50 Pro through hand gestures, facial expressions, and tapping patterns. For instance, you can unlock the screen simply by picking it up, turn on the flashlight with a chopping motion, and take screenshots by tapping the screen with three fingers. Generally, these controls worked fine, although the swipe-to-split feature never quite worked right for me.

On the photo-editing side, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has access to all of Google Photos’ AI features like Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, and Portrait Light. These tools add more substance and definition to the images captured by the otherwise lackluster cameras.

MOTOROLA EDGE 50 PRO REVIEW: VERDICT

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro boasts numerous features that might attract users back to the concept of a curved screen. However, the issue is that there are smartphones on the market, like the Galaxy A55 and the Pixel 8a, that offer more processing power and AI features for less money.

While the performance of the Motorola Edge 50 Pro has its issues, it is still a decent phone for the right person. If you appreciate a phone that is a bit different and offers a fantastic-looking screen, without prioritizing overall power, then this could be the device for you. Additionally, the Motorola Edge 50 Pro currently ships with the Moto Buds Plus, making it a better deal if you don’t already have a pair of Bluetooth headphones.

Source: Tom’s Guide